While I cannot prevent myself from thinking "Open Source" when I read "Open Business", there is a much less revolutionary idea that has been presented by Xavier Comtesse...

... that I think is much more powerful: opening business as in "integrating the consumers/users" deeper into the value chain.

I talked about it in my blog after reading some info on the Lunch Over IP blog on Xavier's work. I have since then seen the idea expanded by Michel Bauwens here.

The basic tool is a matrix where on one axis you look at the data (historical, all the way up to real-time), and on the other axis you would look at the interactions at the consumer/user level: from simple consumption to self service, to customization to co-creation etc…

With this tool it is possible to sort out the various processes within a company, and then analyse which ones could be "improved" by including the consumer/user deeper in this process.

ATMs were the very first example, where users started to get their cash by themselves, Ikea is asking you to build your own furniture, and Dell is asking you to build your own computer. In every case, there are tremendous gains in productivity. And YouTube is an example of the next opportunity: imagine a service where you would ask fans to create their own trailer for a coming movie from carefully chosen clips that would be released to them. Guess how much they would do to spread these to their friends, and the buzz you would get around contests to figure out which one the consumers like best.

So opening the business viewed from this lens is not so much about disruption or revolution, but rather looking at how to go one step further in opening the business in terms of access to data and contribution from users to the value chain. The real revolution is how easily and how much data can we feed to the consumer/user. Opportunities are everywhere and for every company in the world.

A simple and powerful idea, the best answer I have seen so far on "OpenBusiness" opportunities and on how to make sense of all the web2.0 hype…